OLD soldier Alfred Broughton is facing his biggest battle - to stay in the house that has been home for 71 years and where he cares for his blind daughter.

The great-grandfather is digging in his heels over plans by Salford city council to buy his property and knock it down in a bid to regenerate the area where he has lived nearly all his life.

And he vowed: "I will not move."

Alfred, 77, is expecting to be offered é20,000 for the end-of-terrace property that he bought from the council more than 20 years ago - but he says he would need four times that to buy a similar property elsewhere.

If he refuses to sell, the council has said it will seek a compulsory purchase order. The council has contacted people living on the 96-home Wheaters estate in Lower Broughton, informing them their homes are to be bulldozed. The majority of them are tenants and will be rehoused, but Mr Broughton is one of a handful that owns their property.

He said: "I have lived here for more than 70 years - man and boy - and I won't be pushed out. One of my neighbours around the corner has been offered é20,000 for her house - what could I buy for that? But if I don't agree to sell, then they will compulsory purchase it - it is not right, is it?

"I worked hard until I was 68 to pay for this house and why should I give up my children's inheritance? It seems I have got no human rights."

The retired HGV driver says he is happy in the home in Wheaters Terrace where he grew up with his father and saw two of his six children, Mark and Julie, born.

"If they want me out they will have to give me somewhere like the house I have got," he said, "with a shower room for my daughter and a side bit where I can park my car."

As a young soldier, he spent three-and-a-half years in South China, building a mountain road in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Alfred moved into the three-bedroom house, which cost é190 to build, with his father John and mother Sarah Emma in 1932. He grew up as the third-youngest in a family of 10 children. He bought the house from the council for é6,500 in 1982.

The widower now lives with his 49-year-old blind daughter, Andrea, who he cares for full-time.

A spokesman for the council said: "We sympathise with Mr Broughton and we do want to talk to him and work with him with a view to coming to an amicable settlement, before we consider going down the route for a compulsory purchase order."

The council's housing department have deemed the properties in Wheaters are no longer "viable" and say the area should be redeveloped. Scores of houses in neighbouring streets have already been boarded up.